Rubbing It In : Getting Back in the Pink--the Ojai Way

When Hollywood needed a stand-in for the mythical Tibetan paradise of Shangri-La, it used Ojai. It was a very astute choice. Even in 1937 the little town was known as a haven for healers, dreamers and spiritual pitchmen. So in “Lost Horizon,” when Ronald Colman searches through the trackless Himalayan snows and stumbles onto a sunny and verdant Eden filled with a mysteriously healthy people, it was not just any back-lot Valley of the Blue Moon.

It was the Valley of the Pink Moment.

The nickname is derived from a local phenomenon at sunset, when the land is saturated with a fascinating pinkness. The town has also built a reputation as an attraction for people who need a spiritual recharge, for weary souls who need to get back in the good-karmic pink.

When you drive up from Santa Paula you hit a severely curvy section on a mountain’s edge. There’s a large rock where you have to pull over and stare at the enormous view. Sulphur Mountain stands to the south, and below is a rolling carpet of thick, green orange groves, the kind of groves that once covered Southern California. The valley is dotted with ranch houses with genteel chimneys and storybook curls of smoke. From the nearby Pacific comes the long white arm of an ocean cloud, reaching into the sandstone mountains.

Since fires had swept through the northern regions in autumn, the land was probably in need of a recharge. I went up one day in early winter to take a look. I wondered if tree planters were busy bringing the earth back to life.

A few trees were needed. It looked like hell’s own leavin’s. The rain was falling steadily as I crossed into the northern part of the valley. Although the town was pristine and lovely as ever, the scorched hills resembled a war zone. Groves of walnut and orange trees were burnt away. The telephone poles were charred. The chaparral that once covered the mountains was gone, and the crusted dark earth was snarly with a gaping rawness.

On a rainy day, this was pretty depressing.

Aside from some private efforts, no major planting operations had been

mounted. Government workers had planted ryegrass seed; tons of it had been scattered from helicopters. If there was one bright spot, it was that the first shoots of grass were piping up through the blackened soil. Here and there in all that morbid sootiness were the faintest clouds of lime green. A return to life!

But with the storm clouds hanging low on the Santa Ynez Mountains, and all this mud and rain and tragic sentimentality, I soon felt a dire need to get back in the pink. The Ojai way.

Some years ago a friend gave me a gift certificate entitling me to a free massage at the Wheeler Springs baths. Who but a hyena would not take quick advantage of this? It made a fine introduction to the area. Wheeler Springs, a few miles up in the hills above Ojai on California 33, in the Los Padres National Forest, has been home to the hot-springs trade since the 1880s. The land is thick with sulfur, and the waters have been credited with all manner of healing properties. When I first started going to Wheeler Springs, there was an Italian restaurant on the grounds, so you could treat yourself to a devastating one-two-three punch: a deep soak and a deep massage followed by lasagna and wine. No matter what big-city tensions were on your mind when you arrived, by the time you left you’d be lucky to have the brain activity of a pimento.

But this time, with Wheeler Springs open only for three-day weekends, I ended up at Matilija Hot Springs. The tubs and massage rooms were in a little house located in the deep vee of a canyon. The creek rushing by it was swollen with runoff from Matilija Dam. Inside, they handed me a towel and directed me to a big, dark room with a smooth plastic tub that could have held an intimate party of six. The water charged out of jets and boiled and bubbled in the tub. It was aromatic, that water. You can have two or three opinions about the scent of sulfur water.

Steam curled from the tub and rose up to fog the skylight.

In a while, the sodden, pulpy remains of my body were handed over to a young, quiet masseur named Kirk. He was, thank God, not one of those masseurs who feel compelled to reduce you to groaning, screaming protoplasm. In fact, I almost fell asleep on the table.

When I went out later, the night sky was clear and the moon was shining bright.

What is it like living the life of a masseur? The occupation leads you into such silent intimacy with so many strangers. People climb onto the massage table, necks rigid with rusty steel cables of tension, backs sore from carrying the weight of the world. And then the masseur gets his hands on those clumps of agony. They might be strangers under his hands, but they are grateful strangers.

Prowling around Ojai, and soaking up the cosmic tidings imparted by the region, I kept thinking about that friendly vocation. Masseurs would always be welcome guests at parties. They would have to put up with lame sex jokes. You’d be on familiar terms with the human race and you would come to have a . . . certain understanding of the human animal. I intended to go back and ask.

On a sunny day, Ojai’s magic was in full sparkle. The fires damaged nothing in the town or the central valley. The insularity of the town, which is only 75 miles northwest of Los Angeles but remote enough to keep it honest, has worked to preserve it. Such groups as the Citizens to Protect Ojai sprang up to fight the relentless urban spread of the ‘50s. Just a few miles away, the San Fernando Valley provided many lessons.

Tufts of ivy were sprouting in the hills, and many of the oaks in the canyons were in recovery. The Forest Service was still on a strict flood watch--and probably will be for the next three winters. It takes that long for the chaparral to grow back enough to be helpful, and 10 years for it to become thick and woody again. The citizens were counting on it.

At Matilija Hot Springs, the mas seuse on duty was Catherine Hamilton, a slender, dark-haired woman. Wearing a pink nurse’s smock, purple warm-up pants and silver jogging shoes, she sat in the lobby and ate her lunch from a paper bag. It was all apples and oranges. She had sympathetic eyes and a ready little laugh.

“I started doing it as a little girl,” she said, “because my aunt had a sore back, and she just loved it when I gave her a massage. So every morning I would do her back. I would always be asked to do people, and I always had good luck with older people. Everybody said I should get licensed and do it professionally.

“I was living in Santa Barbara then, so I went to school for a year and studied with Dr. Croft. It was night school, so it wasn’t like a whole year with nothing else.”

She said she was on the job six days a week, which sounded to me like an exhausting schedule for this kind of work. But she disagreed.

“There are no tensions in my job,” she said, smiling her quick, heart- shaped smile. “I find it very relaxing. Two or three times a week I’ll do a trade with one of the others. Or my boyfriend will give me a good massage. That helps.”

I asked if she ever has a problem in absorbing tensions from other people’s bodies.

“In the beginning I was a little too sensitive,” she said. “It was like I was psychic or it was some kind of shamanism, where I would know everything about them, and it would pass through the both of us.” She made a circle of her arms to describe an energy loop. “I would have to meditate for 15 minutes afterward in order to clear myself. But after I got more experienced, it didn’t bother me so much. Sometimes I absorb a little tension in my wrists, but I found a homeopathic remedy in Washington, and I rub that in and it takes it right out.

“This morning I did a surgeon. He comes up once in a while. In surgeons, tension builds up across the top of the shoulders and in their necks. It’s from standing in surgery and bending over their work and concentrating like that.

“He was more relaxed than most doctors. He said he wanted a real deep massage, but I wasn’t so sure. I said, ‘Do you have any surgery scheduled for tomorrow?’ Because if I go real deep, it releases a lot of things, a lot of energies that are stored up. And I don’t know if that would be so good for doing surgery.” She giggled shyly at the thought.

It wasn’t part of my plans to get another massage, but then curiosity started to get the better of me--and heck, it had been more than a week since my last visit. So, fighting off some puritanical guilt feelings about this big-time extravagance, I signed up for another $35 bout of tub and table.

Catherine was more conversational than Kirk, with strong and efficient hands. Afterward, I dressed and stumbled woozily into the lobby. I felt like I had a head full of confetti. Catherine smiled and said she had given me a combination of acupressure massage, reflexology, Swedish massage and a few other disciplines. “How do you feel?” she asked.

“Like I’ve been boiled in ether.”

She smiled uncertainly. “I hope that’s good.”

I said it sure was, and reeled outside like a town drunk. Catherine Hamilton remained in the lobby and waited for her 5 o’clock appointment.